@HumphreyBohun Actually, the whole thing still is very mysterious and the documents discovered in the last few years have only made it more so. The Soviet military positions in a June 1941 were entirely offensive. Vast numbers of tanks were brought very forward and faced the Germsns in a
@HumphreyBohun a thoroughly offensive manner. Moreover, Stalin made a number of moves that made no sense from the point of view of defence. That including disarming mine fields but the most fateful thing was moving the Dnieper flotilla (see en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dnieper_F… ) from the Dnieper to the
@HumphreyBohun Danube. The Dnieper flotilla was the most powerful river flotilla in the world and it was Russia’s strongest defence. If the bridges on the Dnieper were destroyed, the Germans would not be able to cross the giant river and the flotilla would prevent bridges being rebuilt. But
@HumphreyBohun Stalin decided to move it to the Danube, wher it became the Danube flotilla (en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Danube_Fl… ), which then began to be seen as a direct threat to Romania from where Germany received most of its oil. It is well known that this action greatly angered Hitler (as did Stalin’s
@HumphreyBohun violation of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact, when they Soviets occupied Northern Bukovia and Herza, in addition to Bessarabia, which was given to them in the pact).
Such considerations, plus various comments by Soviet marshals and Ehrenburg’s memoirs when he mentioned a
Such considerations, plus various comments by Soviet marshals and Ehrenburg’s memoirs when he mentioned a
@HumphreyBohun conversation with Stalin in which the latter told him that he would soon be able to continue writing an anti-Nazi book which he started but had to stop, lead Victor Suvorov (a GRU defector) to suggest in “The Icebreaker” that Stalin was preparing to attack Hitler in a June
@HumphreyBohun or July 1944, and that Hitler beat him to it. Suvorov was fiercely attacked by both Soviet and Western historians (the latter weirdly assuming that he was defending Hitler, since his attack could now be seen as preemptive). Suvorov did not really have any documentary evidence but
@HumphreyBohun since the fall of the Soviet Union a lot has been found, which can be taken as supporting or partially supporting his thesis. Athens most important are Soviet military plans and maps, many of which were found by Mark Solonin and are actually declassified. They are personally made
@HumphreyBohun by Zhukov, Vatutin and Vassilevsky and all of them are plans for a Soviet offensive deeply into German occupied Poland. These plans were updated a number of times, but always with the same basic design. Moreover, no other Soviet plans of any kind have ever been found. This
@HumphreyBohun argument was used by Solonin in debates with sceptics who said that the existence of plans (without Stalin’s signature) doesn’t prove anything because the military always make plans for various contingencies. Solonin’s answer is that in this case there should be at least some
@HumphreyBohun other plans, but there aren’t any. Solonin has often complained of Wesyetn historians refusal even to examine these plans and he attributes this to them buying wholesale Soviet and Russian propaganda. However, these plans are considered in the 2nd volume of Kotkin’s biography of
@HumphreyBohun Stalin. Although Kotkin does not refer to Suvorov, he does refer to a Solonin’s work, which part,y supports Suvorov. Kotkin concludes that the plans and maps are undoubtedly genuine and that indeed the Soviet Genetal staff had planned only for an offensive war (he is actually
@HumphreyBohun quite scornful about the “lack of realism” of these Soviet generals who would eventually all become famous. But he still thinks that Stalin did not approve an offensive. Instead Kotkin’s theory is that Stalin, felt certain that Germany cannot fight a war on two fronts and would
@HumphreyBohun not attack the Soviet Union until it dealt with a great Britain. He therefore took all the visibly aggressive a German moves as a bluff designed to extract economic concessions and decided to match it with his own bluff. This Kotkin believes was the reason for the offensive
@HumphreyBohun placing of Soviet troops, and all the other things observed by Suvorov and others. In other words, according to Kotkin, Stalin thought Hitler was bluffing and decided to do the same thing himself, except that he was completely unprepared for his bluff to be called.
